Morgan Stanley Launches the First Bitcoin ETF From a Major U.S. Bank

Hi! In today's edition:

• 🏦 Morgan Stanley today becomes the first major U.S. bank to launch a spot bitcoin ETF, pricing it at 0.14% to undercut BlackRock and deploying 16,000 advisors to sell it

• 📈 Bitcoin hit $72,738, its highest in three weeks, as a US-Iran ceasefire triggered $427 million in short liquidations

• ⚖️ Trump's World Liberty Financial partnered with a blockchain project tied to a U.S.-sanctioned Cambodian fraud network weeks after those sanctions were imposed

• 📖 CZ's memoir dropped today with revelations that SBF casually asked for billions during the FTX collapse, and that he once offered Gary Gensler a job at Binance

Today’s newsletter is brought to you by Nexo!

Unlock Exclusive Rates with Nexo

Nexo is a premier digital wealth platform offering:

• crypto yield up to 15% (based on stated annual interest rates)

• crypto-backed credit lines from 1.9%

• a wide range of digital assets.

Join today and get 30-day access to exclusive rates.

Morgan Stanley Becomes First Major Bank to Launch Its Own Bitcoin ETF

Morgan Stanley's spot bitcoin ETF will begin trading Wednesday on NYSE Arca under the ticker MSBT, making it the first product of its kind issued directly by a major U.S. bank. The fund charges just 0.14% annually, undercutting BlackRock's IBIT by 11 basis points and setting a new low for the category.

The real edge isn't the fee. Morgan Stanley controls a wealth management army of roughly 16,000 financial advisors overseeing $9.3 trillion in client assets. When those advisors recommend MSBT, everything stays in-house. Coinbase handles bitcoin custody, while BNY Mellon serves as cash custodian.

The bank also has S-1 filings pending for Ethereum and Solana trusts and plans to launch retail crypto trading on E-Trade later this year.

Bitcoin Hits Three-Week High as US-Iran Ceasefire Crushes Oil

Bitcoin spiked 4.9% to $72,738 on Wednesday, its highest level since mid-March, after President Trump announced a two-week ceasefire with Iran via Truth Social. The agreement, mediated by Pakistan with formal talks set for April 10 in Islamabad, immediately deflated the oil-driven risk premium that had weighed on crypto for weeks.

West Texas Intermediate crude crashed more than 10% to around $95 a barrel. The move triggered roughly $595 million in crypto liquidations, with $427 million coming from short sellers in the most aggressive squeeze since early March. Ethereum jumped as much as 7.4% to $2,273.

Trump's World Liberty Financial Partnered With a Firm Tied to a Sanctioned Crime Network

World Liberty Financial, the crypto venture co-founded by the Trump family, is facing fresh scrutiny after an investigation by The Times revealed that one of its partners had ties to a sanctioned transnational crime network. The partner, a Southeast Asian blockchain project called AB DAO, had been promoting a resort linked to Cambodia's Prince Group until weeks before the partnership was announced in November.

U.S. authorities sanctioned Prince Group founder Chen Zhi and associates for alleged involvement in large-scale online fraud, and the government seized $15 billion worth of bitcoin from him. World Liberty said it conducted due diligence and has no direct connection to sanctioned figures, but The Times found the company was unaware of AB DAO's Prince Group ties when it signed the deal.

CZ's Memoir Drops Today With New Details on the FTX Collapse and a Sushi Dinner With Gensler

Changpeng Zhao's 457-page memoir, Freedom of Money, hit shelves Wednesday with a trove of behind-the-scenes revelations. The most vivid: when FTX was circling the drain in November 2022, Sam Bankman-Fried called CZ and asked for billions of dollars in rescue funding, which Zhao described as being requested as casually as ordering a bologna sandwich.

CZ also revealed he was introduced to Gary Gensler in 2018 and offered him an advisory role at Binance, which Gensler declined. The two later met for sushi in Tokyo in March 2019. Gensler went on to lead an SEC enforcement campaign that included a lawsuit against Binance, though the case was withdrawn after Trump took office. CZ wrote most of the manuscript during his four-month federal prison sentence. All proceeds go to charity.

UNEASY MONEY LIVE

Today, Austin Griffith of the Ethereum Foundation joins Kain and Tay to talk about Anthropic’s Mythos, plummeting DeFi yields, and more!  

Tune in at 4pm ET on X, YouTube or PumpFun.

• 📊 The FBI reported $11.4 billion in crypto fraud losses in 2025, a 22% jump from 2024. Americans over 60 accounted for nearly 40% of all losses, with investment scams alone totaling $7.2 billion.

• 🕵️ A New York Times investigation suggests Blockstream CEO Adam Back, the British cryptographer who invented Hashcash, is Bitcoin's pseudonymous creator Satoshi Nakamoto. Back denied the claim, and the Times acknowledged that without a signed message from Satoshi's keys, the case remains educated deduction.

• 🔒 Bybit detected and blocked coordinated fake deposit attacks across multiple blockchain networks, preventing over $1 billion in potential DOT losses. The attacks exploited batch transaction and ownership-change techniques, but Bybit's system decomposed every transaction to its atomic operations and caught them in real time.

• 🇺🇸 The SEC acknowledged flaws in prior crypto enforcement, dismissing seven cases against firms including Binance and Coinbase. The agency said the actions produced no meaningful investor benefit and reflected a misinterpretation of federal securities laws.

• 🚨 On-chain investigator ZachXBT alleged that Solana projects ElementalDeFi and Stabble had unknowingly employed a North Korean IT worker operating under fake identities. Stabble urged all liquidity providers to withdraw funds as a precaution, though no exploit occurred.

• 🏦 Binance.US is plotting a comeback under new CEO Stephen Gregory, with plans to expand into retail derivatives and prediction markets. The exchange held roughly 20% of the U.S. market at its peak but currently sits near zero.

• The White House Council of Economic Advisers has rejected the banking industry’s narrative that stablecoin yield will hurt community banks and lending to small businesses as a result. The CEA in an April 8 report said it instead found that stablecoin yield could increase lending by $2.1 billion in the base case, adding $500 million to community bank lending.

• ⚖️ The DOJ rejected Tornado Cash co-founder Roman Storm's latest bid to dismiss charges, arguing that a Supreme Court copyright ruling his defense cited has no bearing on the criminal statutes at issue. A hearing on Storm's motion for acquittal is set for April 9.

• 🇰🇷 South Korea's Financial Services Commission ordered real-time balance checks at all domestic crypto exchanges after Bithumb accidentally distributed 2,000 BTC per user instead of 2,000 won, creating a $39.9 billion mismatch. Exchanges must now reconcile balances every five minutes and halt trading when discrepancies arise.

• 🏦 Schwab found that even a 1% to 3% crypto allocation can meaningfully reshape a portfolio's volatility and behavior during market stress. The firm concluded that sizing a crypto position should be about risk tolerance, not return forecasting.

• 🏛️ The FDIC proposed rules for stablecoin issuers following the GENIUS Act's enactment, requiring 1:1 reserves in eligible assets and redemption within two business days. The proposal also prohibits issuers from claiming their tokens generate interest or yield.

• 📈 CME Group will launch 24/7 crypto derivatives trading on May 29 and add Avalanche and Sui futures contracts starting May 4. March average daily volume was up 19% year over year, with nearly $8 billion in average notional value traded daily.

• 🇦🇺 Coinbase secured an Australian Financial Services License from ASIC, becoming the first crypto exchange to receive the approval directly. The company plans to roll out crypto and equity perpetuals, followed by futures, options, and stock trading.

• 🇨🇭 UBS and five Swiss banks launched a sandbox to test use cases for a Swiss franc stablecoin, including payments, interbank settlement, and tokenized asset transactions. PostFinance, Sygnum, Raiffeisen, ZKB, and BCV are participating alongside Swiss Stablecoin AG.

Enter Bitcoin Capital Markets

Bitcoin’s application layer, Citrea, launched its mainnet, expanding Bitcoin’s utility to privacy, lending, BTC yields, and more.

Past efforts to build a Bitcoin ecosystem were forced to sacrifice programmability or rely on heavy trust assumptions that limited adoption. Citrea marks a new beginning: an end-to-end Bitcoin ecosystem that relies solely on the Bitcoin Network as its source of truth.

Citrea enables:

• cBTC: The first trust-minimized Bitcoin on a fully programmable platform.

• ctUSD: A native stablecoin for Bitcoin, allowing for unified liquidity.

• Bitcoin Capital Markets bringing demand, and utility to the Bitcoin Network.

1. The Defiant: DeFi Lending's Risk-Reward Ratio Sparks Debate Between Researchers and Curators